


Death Smiled Sweetly (and by degrees)

by GhostoftheMotif



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Betrayal, Developing Relationship, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-03
Updated: 2011-10-03
Packaged: 2017-10-24 07:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostoftheMotif/pseuds/GhostoftheMotif
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t until Starscream reached the door that he angled his head to flash Megatron a smile courting the edges of a sneer, and Megatron wondered when Starscream had gone from a malnourished recruit to a mech that had fully grown into the expression.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Smiled Sweetly (and by degrees)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyrandomness](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ladyrandomness).



The seeker knelt at the base of Megatron’s throne, head bowed. Sections of his armor were almost translucent from malnourishment, yet the gleam in the red of his optics was powerful and defiant. Megatron knew without spoken words that he was looking at a survivor. There was a hunger in the young recruit’s face that betrayed years of being backed into a corner and fighting his way out of it again. The seeker’s wings were taut, shaking at the tips from tension that refused to ease.  
   
“Rise, Starscream,” Megatron commanded with a smirk at the drying energon on his hands.  
   
Starscream stood, the motion swift and graceful despite his slight shudders.  
   
Most soldiers would never dare to meet Megatron’s optics.  
   
Starscream did so as if looking away had never been an option.  
   
“Soundwave informs me that you offlined six of your comrades during a training drill.” Megatron’s tone was amused as he rested his head against a fist. The telepath stiffened beside him at the mention of his name. It was obvious that the communications officer held no love for the soldier before them.  
   
The seeker spoke smoothly. “They were weak. No amount of training could undo that fact… I simply culled those that would have died too easily on the field.”  
   
The corners of Megatron’s mouth twitched. “Those mechs are what we refer to as fodder, and they do have their uses. In the future, allow the enemy to waste ammunition _culling_ the weak. Save your own.”  
   
Starscream simply smiled.  
   
\---  
   
Megatron stood in shadow, arms folded, as he watched the seeker trine. There were an upwards of fifty trines in active duty, and yet every praise seemed to be devoted to the one in front of him.   
   
The three seekers had turned their training into little more than a game. Slaughtered drones littered the simulation room, nearly giving it the look of a true battle. Automated laserfire filled the air, but it seemed to go unnoticed.  
   
Every other simulation room Megatron had passed had been dominated by the sound of yelled orders and shouts of pain.  
   
This one was full to the brim with laughter and good-natured quips.   
   
His optics were fixed on Starscream as he wove around his wingmates. The trine leader was grinning as he tried to bait drones into crossing the path of laserfire while the other two seekers urged him on. His armor was barely singed.  
   
Megatron’s smile matched Starscream’s, dipped in the same pool of questionable sanity.  
   
\---  
   
He spun the seeker away from himself, toppling him easily. “You aren’t strong enough to be so forward, Starscream,” Megatron sneered.  
   
Starscream righted himself, looking indignant.  
   
Megatron could tell that the seeker wanted to ask him to elaborate, but pride was getting in the way. When they’d first started their little one-on-one sessions, nothing would have stopped Starscream from posing questions. It was almost endearing how ready the seeker was to learn, to understand. But as they spent more time together, Starscream became more eager to impress Megatron than to be educated. The seeker was determined to learn through trial and error rather than admit ignorance.  
   
They both adopted a ready stance, but Starscream’s weariness was obvious.  
   
“You’re tiring,” Megatron commented offhandedly.   
   
“I’m not done yet,” the seeker assured.  
   
Megatron chuckled as the flier lunged for him yet again. He stepped aside, catching an outstretched wrist. To his credit, Starscream did answer with the correct kick, but it did him little good. Grinning, he pulled Starscream back against him. “Aren’t you going to ask me what you’re doing wrong?” he murmured against the young soldier’s helmet.  
   
At its best, the look on Starscream’s face was a grimace. At its worst, the look was a pout. He growled, straining against the tyrant’s hold. When he realized it was hopeless, his body went slack. “Fine. Tell me.”  
   
“Tell you what?” Megatron baited.  
   
Starscream let out a shout of frustration and resumed his struggling vehemently. “Tell me what I’m doing wrong!” he snapped. “There, I admitted it!” he turned to face Megatron as best as he could. “Happy?”  
   
Megatron smiled.  
   
\---  
   
The roar of battle overpowered every other sensation. The ground shook; the air burned; the living bled.  
   
The surrounding area was a masterpiece of death, of chaos, and Megatron was the artist.  
   
By that metaphor, his truest work of art was Starscream.  
   
The seeker was bathed in the light of flames, painted with the energon of the dying. It flecked his armor with patterns of fluorescent pain and glory, making him an ever-changing gruesome canvas. The red of his optics was pure, an untainted oath to violence as he tore through soldier after soldier.  
   
His seeker rose into Cybertron’s ash-strewn air, a beacon of destruction. He turned in mid-flight, their optics meeting from across the battlefield.  
   
He was beautiful.  
   
And through the beauty, Starscream smiled.  
   
\---  
   
“Unpredictable,” Soundwave commented at volume that Megatron might have missed if he hadn’t become accustomed to listening for the murmur Soundwave’s opinions became when they hadn’t been asked for. “Overambitious. Untrustworthy.”  
   
“What Decepticon isn’t?” Megatron countered. Even if he couldn’t see Soundwave’s face, he had come to know him well enough to sense the slight tenseness that entered the other mech’s stance at the words. “Present company excluded, of course,” he amended for his benefit. If a day came when Soundwave gave him cause to doubt his fidelity, Megatron would known he’d finally done something irreparably wrong.  
   
Soundwave didn’t reply.  
   
“You want to know why I’ve chosen to elevate his rank instead of that of a soldier whose loyalties have been proven.”  
   
Again, Soundwave didn’t reply, but his head bowed minutely.  
   
Megatron’s optics shifted to focus on Starscream far below them, weaving his way in and out of the assembled fliers, finally comprising a number to warrant an Air Commander. “I would rather have a lieutenant that I can trust to deactivate perceived threats without discrimination than a lieutenant that may hesitate through misplaced loyalty, even if I am that perceived threat. If your misgivings are warranted, which they nearly always are, then I have no doubt in my ability to defend myself from Starscream.” He turned his back on the scene, folded his arms, and considered Soundwave carefully. “The day that I trust this seeker enough that he is able to kill me is the day I am no longer fit to rule.”  
   
“An unnecessary risk,” Soundwave observed slowly.  
   
“The most beneficial ones almost always are.”  
   
There was a sound like a hundred sheets of metal being struck by falling debris, and the newest portion of his army rose into the air at a speed that was staggering. Megatron watched their progress, and when he saw the ease with which they maneuvered into formation with Starscream at their head, he smiled.  
   
\---  
   
The shot grazed Megatron’s helmet, and before he could even turn towards the threat--- his hand was embedded in the chest of one Autobot while the other had extended to fire at the mech over the shoulder of the dying trash, and he was quite occupied in those few seconds--- the disembodied arm still holding the weapon that had fired at him landed at his feet, leaking energon all over Autobot red.  
   
“Careful, Lord Megatron,” Starscream called over to him as he dispatched the soldier still screaming over the loss of his limb. “It’d be hard to follow the orders of someone missing a head.”  
   
Megatron gave a laugh that made the Autobots just converging on their position pause, and Starscream smiled at their hesitation with the assurance that came from knowing what the fools were about to face.  
   
\---  
   
“The orders I gave you were to bomb the supply line.”  
   
“They left their cache undefended to help the workers. It was an easy steal!”  
   
“You nearly caused us to lose our position.”  
   
“It worked.”  
   
“Only because I realized what you intended in time to grant you a diversion.”  
   
“But, my Lord, I got the energon!”  
   
“And lost four Decepticons who had survived long enough to prove their worth.”  
   
“I…”  
   
“The next time I give you implicit orders, what is the correct response?”  
   
“Follow them to the letter,” Starscream answered stonily, looking away from his optics. “And do it with a smile.”  
   
\---  
   
He’d predicted it, of course, but he hadn’t done anything to derail it. With a little direction, Starscream’s recklessness and improvisation undeniably got results. And if the ‘direction’ offered strayed farther and farther from praise and closer to threats, then it was only because that was the choice Starscream left him. The sessions between them that had begun as training exercises for a young recruit had progressed to a level that ensured Starscream was not the only one walking away with injuries, though Megatron’s were incontestably fewer and minor. Fervor was something Starscream possessed in great amounts, and it became half-crazed, unrelenting even in sparring.   
   
There was nothing quite like knowing that the mech whose hand was around his throat was the same one he had lifted onto a pedestal, the same one he’d set upon his enemies with well-honed accuracy. And when Megatron crushed that hand and twisted its wrist until the seeker was forced to his knees, jaw clenched against any sound, Megatron couldn’t help but feel that this was the difference between being in control and being blind to fault.  
   
Once Starscream realized that actions beyond what Megatron decreed could end in success, once he realized that Megatron was not infallible, the cracks in his demeanor of hero-worship began to widen. Starscream was probably the only mech in the ranks who dared to criticize Megatron to his face and flatter him in the same sentence. He was a constant mass of contradictions, a needle on a perpetual spiral of awestruck, defiant, energon-soaked and triumphant, kneeling and contrite.  
   
Something began to change in Megatron’s smile when it was directed at Starscream, something that moved it towards a spectrum normally reserved for Prime and yet was somehow fonder than he could afford.  
   
\---  
   
If they’d started sooner, maybe the outcome would have been different. Maybe it would have provided a link to anchor both their sanities, given them security when their backs were turned so that when their attention was divided it was not with fear of betrayal.  
   
But they didn’t. Instead, it began when Starscream became self-possessed enough to consider himself Megatron’s peer but after the point when contention was common between them.  
   
Megatron kissed him first on a battlefield, enemy energon coating their armor and giving the buildings on either side of them a fluorescent glow, and when Starscream smiled, nothing in the expression bespoke trust.  
   
\---  
   
“Oh, have I _disappointed_ you, my lord?” It left Starscream’s mouth as a sneer, fury insulated in insolence.  
   
“We lost Altihex because of your shortsighted need to prove me wrong!” Megatron snarled back, barely refraining from striking him. “I ordered you after the medic to prevent them from being able to perform repairs while under siege, not because I thought you incapable of surviving on the front. If you’d simply followed my command---”  
   
“---you wouldn’t have known that their engineer was building incendiaries into the foundation of the city wall!” Starscream countered, anger still masked by sculpted mockery.  
   
“Ravage was patrolling the perimeter and would have discovered him,” Megatron grit out. “Your disobedience was pointless.”  
   
“Much of what I do while under your command seems to be pointless.” There was a tremor in the tips of Starscream’s wings, livid. “At least when I follow my own instincts there’s hope that I will accomplish something.”  
   
The tone of Megatron’s voice sharpened, level and even as steel. “And yet all I have seen from your defiance thus far is failure.”  
   
“And what would you call a civil war spanning millennia numbering greater than what’s left of our own _population?_ ”  
   
Megatron did strike him then, and Starscream’s head snapped to the side as he stumbled before he righted himself and flashed Megatron a vicious smile slick with energon at the corners.  
   
\---  
   
“He _will_ betray you.”  
   
Megatron’s smile was crooked, looked a little starved as he answered Soundwave, “I know.”  
   
\---  
   
Despite the level and regularity of their involvement, they’d never recharged in the same berth. That fact provided a concise précis for their relationship. Their interactions were composed entirely of moments of intensity, with nothing filling the spaces between. Both were aware that the other was equally as likely to deactivate them in their recharge as face-to-face, and neither was going to give even the ghost of an opportunity. There was no place for anything approaching warmth or real affection; there was not security enough for that.  
   
Megatron said nothing as Starscream slid away from him to sit on the edge of the berth, wings reflecting the light of the cityscape outside the darkened room. When the seeker stood, it only accentuated the reasons Megatron should not take his optics off him. The movement was completely silent, and if he hadn’t been looking, he could have almost believed he was alone.  
   
It wasn’t until Starscream reached the door that he angled his head to flash Megatron a smile courting the edges of a sneer, and Megatron wondered when Starscream had gone from a malnourished recruit to a mech that had fully grown into the expression.  
   
\---  
   
The first time Starscream shot him was not a surprise, and that likely shaped the course of Megatron’s reaction. He’d been able to see the build-up in Starscream’s face, been able to catch the now familiar shake to his wings that never failed to give him away even when he managed to remain otherwise composed. Anger finally spilled over in the light of Starscream’s optics, brightening in tandem with the hum of his null rays as he lifted an arm and fired off two blasts. The first caught his shoulder, and the second missed entirely as Megatron instinctively slanted his body away, an almost negligible movement that nonetheless made Starscream’s efforts futile.  
   
Megatron did not fire back.  
   
He saw the precise moment when the seeker’s expression changed, when what he’d done sank in, and Starscream staggered back, stammering out words in shock, in panic. It wasn’t begging, it wasn’t groveling, it was… just his name, and that he hadn’t meant it, and instant, raw doubt as their regard for each other shifted and realigned.  
   
In place of the life he should have taken for treason, Megatron simply walked forward, noting that Starscream didn’t even have the presence of mind to back away from him as he lifted a hand to close around his air commander’s throat. “This can’t have caught you off guard, Starscream.” His hand clenched. “This has been your intention for as long as you’ve been by my side. Luckily for you, it’s a flaw I’ve been aware of longer than you almost certainly have.” He smiled, jagged and brutal, and added, “And you’re far too obvious in your ambitions to pose any danger to me, my dear.”  
   
\---  
   
They sat around the table, observing data displayed in the center as Shockwave described in detail the battle scenarios for Polyhex. For once, Starscream was silent. It was the first meeting between the four of them since Starscream had shot him, and it was obvious from the lack of either Soundwave or Starscream’s commentary that there was an unheard conversation going on between them on a private comm. Starscream looked shaken. Whatever Soundwave was saying, it was having an impact.  
   
If he’d been observing the face of the young mech Starscream had been when they first met, Megatron would have said that the subtle shifts in his expressions meant that he was laboring under a heavy decision. Everything had changed with those two shots, and they both had to adjust their understanding of each other to compensate now that the inevitability had been broached. Megatron had done it easily. He’d been preparing for it from the start, but Starscream was facing the tumult of one trying to reassess his loyalty, his devotion, his conviction. Knowing the way Starscream had aged, however, Megatron knew that he wasn’t merely revaluating his principles: he was allotting them neatly into categories that involved Megatron’s death or survival and his own survival, and being mindful of where they overlapped.  
   
Shockwave plotted, Soundwave manipulated, and Starscream thought.  
   
Megatron observed, knew, and smiled because he’d been right.  
   
\---  
   
The battered mech on his knees before Megatron’s throne had defected, but no soldier escaped Soundwave’s notice. When the deluded fool had tried to turn spy for the Autobots, it was with their full awareness. For a time they’d used it to their advantage, monitoring each rendezvous to glean information of their own. His attempt on Megatron’s life had put an end to that charade.  
   
“Starscream,” Megatron spoke, smoothly, easily. “Execute the traitor.”  
   
Stirring from his place at Megatron’s side, the seeker moved to comply. There was a sneer fixed on his face, but it was brittle, forced as he came to a stop above the collaborator’s shuddering form. ( _This is what may happen, this could one day be him, this is a lesson._ )  
   
His shot struck the mech in the spark chamber, but the former Decepticon had jerked away and prevented the death from being instantaneous. Starscream knelt at the traitor’s side as energon and static energy flared and sputtered, and Megatron dismissed it as his usual penchant for taunting the dead, until---  
   
“Not what it appears,” Soundwave cautioned lowly. “Starscream: angry, does not believe shooting you betrayal. True motive: believes executing the defector is the real betrayal.”  
   
Megatron snapped his optics back on Starscream. Whatever his Air Commander murmured to the spy, it made the dying mech smile.  
   
\---  
   
It would have been easier to gain a vantage point over the Autobot patrol from the edge of the plateau.  
   
It would have been easier, but Megatron didn’t take the position.  
   
Starscream gave him a smile, well aware that Megatron had made the assessment knowing that Starscream had considered shooting him in the back and pushing him over.  
   
\---  
   
Whenever they were alone together, Megatron was hyperaware, and it was no longer just from want. Every touch could hold a knife, every kiss could distract from a gun. Every sound they made could conceal the hum of a charging weapon, every seeming moment of trust could be a bluff. ( _Every memory could be a liability, every stolen moment of comfort could be a self-constructed lie, but every laugh, every hope, every could-have-been, and every once-was could be so much more, could even be---_ )  
   
Every smile could hide murder.  
   
\---  
   
Their only moment of peace came when they slept for billions of years, locked in recharge on a damaged enemy ship. Their only moment of calm was when neither of them could smile.  
   
\---  
   
The Earth sky suited Starscream aesthetically if nothing else. But then the sun set, and they could see the stars, and the distance from their home only served to drive them to each other’s throats with increasing frequency. Something between them had gone cold, harsh, burned with the consequence of it. It wasn’t passion anymore. It was bitter, and Megatron wanted to deactivate him as much as he wanted to touch him, felt anger pulse through him whenever he heard that voice that used to curiously ask him questions about the war and now held nothing but derisive contempt.   
   
Whatever they’d become was pendulous, and Megatron was waiting for the weight that would snap that thread.  
   
His fusion cannon caught the command room’s artificial glow as Megatron tilted a smile at Starscream from his place atop his throne; he hadn’t betrayed him in several orns, and for them that was almost loving.  
   
\---  
   
Rediscovering Skyfire had awakened Starscream to something he’d lost, some crucial and intrinsic part of himself that he held Megatron accountable for. It wasn’t an old love reignited, it was the stark realization that the _capacity for it_ had been stripped away. Logically, they both knew that sequence had started before Starscream had even met Megatron, but they were also bluntly aware that it was fighting a war under his command, beneath his far-reaching influence, that had brought it to its peak.  
   
The damning thing about someone holding another accountable for their own corruption is that it gives an observable model for excess, draws the optics to try and dissect precisely what must be done to surpass their teacher--- and more than that, it is prone to hate, prone to envy, and by its nature prone to further corruption.  
   
On Earth, the enmity between them intensified to a level that made a demanding, ruthless creature born long ago in the arena lift its head and snarl for spilt energon. The urge was a constant hiss in Megatron’s thoughts, frothing in his spark, insistent that he dispatch the threat ( _dig his hands into Starscream’s armor, press the fusion cannon to the hollow of his throat, watch those optics quiver to grey_ ). He buried it, the way he’d buried many base impulses. The issue was justifying it.  
   
Starscream leaned into his body, Megatron’s arm draped across his wings, a brief moment in which both of them unconsciously relaxed as they reviewed the schematics of an oil rig.  
   
Having Starscream at his side was… familiar, second nature.   
   
In front of them, Rumble snarked at Skywarp, and a smile passed over both their faces: complacent, smothered, soon to be brought to fire, soon to die.  
   
\---  
   
His soldiers were around him, each face etched into his memory with the weight of war and time. There was something strange in their expressions that set off battle-honed senses clawing at the inside of his spark chamber, but he was still adrift in pain, in the haze of knowing Optimus Prime was fatally wounded.  
   
Starscream cradled him to his chest, and Megatron knew what would happen before they’d even moved. His protests were instinctual, rang out despite knowing there was no point. They’d been approaching this for an eternity, edging towards the final line to cross. Megatron just hadn’t thought that it would be him, hadn’t thought that his seeker would finally succeed where they’d both consistently failed.  
   
“Oh, how it _pains_ me to do this.”  
   
The smile on Starscream’s face as he gave Megatron’s wounded body up to space was almost sweet.


End file.
